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Introducing The Prophet
Dear Friend, We close out our third season of The Contemplative Reading Project, and this year’s spring reads, with a book I’ve had on my “to be read” pile for so many years:The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I’ve selected the 2015 Vintage Books Edition, with the author’s original illustrations. Publisher’s description: The Prophet is a collection…
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The Immense Preciousness of Each Breath
Dear Friend, What is a memoir? How–or why–does it work? Maybe it starts with a good title. Crazy Brave is more than a double-entendre. It seems to work in every imaginable combination. Harjo’s life was certainly filled with “crazy” people and events, those that are both unwelcome and unexpected. It was also “crazy” wild in…
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A Night Sky Rich with Falling Stars
Dear Friends, “West is the direction of endings . . . [i]t represents learning to find the road in the darkness” (109). If you’re paying attention the cover pages for each chapter, you’ve probably figured out by now that they do a nice job of summarizing the theme or mood of what’s to come. In…
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The Edge of Sorrow
Dear Friends, They say that pain is good for creativity. There’s a long mythology surrounding “the tortured artist,” so much so that the idea has become a cliché. The myth also becomes a problem, because many young aspiring artists believe they must seek out pain to become great, and that’s certainly not healthy (and it…
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Every Soul Has a Song
Dear Friends, There’s something special about poetic memoirs. Or memoirs by poets. I’ve found that these create a kind of bridge or common ground for readers who are unused to poetry and perhaps intimidated by it. Much like Mary Oliver’s Long Life, Joy Harjo’s Crazy Brave is primarily a narrative of her life, told in…
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